The man who jumped

Steven Altman was Sea Tow’s own attorney — co-counsel with Mitchell Stein, on the same team, fighting the same fight — after the national firm Akerman LLP had already withdrawn in September 2021. Then, in August 2023, he walked into the Eastern District of New York and quit. Not quietly. Not amicably. On the record.

“STSI insisted on legal strategies that I believe are contrary to the law and my ethical obligations.”Steven Altman · Document 241 · August 2023 withdrawal motion

Why that sentence is a depth charge

Read it again. Sea Tow’s own lawyer told a federal court that his client was insisting on strategies contrary to law — and then left. In legal circles this is the nuclear option: attorneys carry duties of confidentiality and loyalty, and they do not put language like that on a public docket unless they believe continuing could expose them to sanctions, discipline, or worse. Faced with what the client was asking, Altman chose his law license over the billing.

We call him The Deserter with a wink — the dispatches note he is not exactly a hero, more of a scamp; he crewed this ship for two years before the conscience kicked in. But whatever the motive, the testimony he left behind cannot be unsaid. It sits in the permanent record of 2:20-cv-02877-WFK-SIL, waiting.

The pattern of departing counsel

Altman’s exit is not an isolated data point. Akerman LLP withdrew in 2021. Altman withdrew in 2023 with the language above. Since then, Stein has largely sailed alone. Three sets of counsel; one constant. We report the sequence and let readers draw the chart themselves.